Tories oversee mass council homes sale : Morning Star

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HUNDREDS of thousands of council homes have been lost under the Tories, Labour said yesterday, citing newly released government statistics.

Some 208,000 properties have been sold off since the end of the last Labour government in 2010, figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government show.

The homes were flogged to tenants at huge discounts or put on the open market under the Conservatives’ flagship policy of right to buy.

A number of the most valuable council properties were sold by local authorities to fund the extension of the right to buy to housing association tenants.

This is while councils, struggling to find homes for housing applicants, are forced to cull the number of people on their ever-growing waiting lists by deeming them “low priority” or offer them properties in different cities to those they had rooted their lives in.

The number of new truly affordable homes built by councils and housing associations is at a 24-year low, according to government data.

When Tory ministers decided to increase the discounts for social housing residents five years ago, they promised that each property sold would be replaced “like for like.” But official statistics show they have only replaced one for every five sold.

Published by stilloaks

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If Labour scrapped the right to buy, and carried out the building programme of building 100,000 new council homes for social rent each year, the housing benefit bill would reduce significantly, putting more money back into the economy. There would be no need for the bedroom tax to exist either.